The Family Office Liquidity Playbook: Vetting the Next Cheque

SunCable’s collapse showed that billionaire shareholders and a large prior raise do not guarantee replacement funding when a project misses milestones. Exor shows the opposite: a realised asset sale can create visible, time-specific investment capacity. Family offices are often described as permanent capital, but that only means investors cannot withdraw from a fund. It says nothing about cash, reserves, collateral demands, decision rights or appetite for a new commitment. Founders should qualify mandate, liquidity source, authority and follow-on capacity before counting an office as live pipeline.

On January 11, 2023, SunCable entered voluntary administration.

That was awkward for a company proposing the Australia-Asia PowerLink. More awkward still because its shareholders included two wealthy Australian backers. Mike Cannon-Brookes’s Grok Ventures, his investment firm, and Andrew Forrest’s Squadron Energy, the energy business that backed the project, had led an A$210 million raise only ten months earlier.

Yet the shareholders could not agree on the project’s direction and funding structure. Milestones were missed. Replacement funding did not arrive.

Now place that beside Exor, the Agnelli-family-controlled holding company based in Italy and the Netherlands. On July 12, 2022, Exor sold PartnerRe, the insurance company it had bought for about $6.7 billion in 2015-16, to Covéa for $9.3 billion in cash. It then set out where the money would go.

SunCable had wealthy owners but no workable agreement for the next funding moment. Exor had a cash realisation and disclosed allocations. Same broad category of capital. Entirely different ability to move.

This is the question founders should ask before treating any family office as a serious prospect: if the business needs more money later, who has both the authority and the available capital to provide it?

Most fundraising databases start somewhere else. They sort investors by estimated wealth, location, sector labels and portfolio companies. The phrase “permanent capital” does the rest of the seduction. It sounds like a promise that money will wait patiently for the right opportunity.

It is not a promise. It is a description of structure.

Permanent capital means investors cannot redeem their money from a fund on demand. It does not mean an office has spare cash. It does not mean the people involved agree on your strategy. And it certainly does not mean they have reserved money for the round after this one.

When wealth becomes a cheque

Exor’s PartnerRe sale is useful because the distinction is unusually visible.

The sale did not make Exor wealthy. It was already wealthy. What changed was the form of its resources: an asset had become cash, and Exor had assigned that cash to particular uses.

Exor said it allocated approximately €5.8 billion to companies, investment vehicles and buybacks, plus €0.6 billion to deleveraging, meaning reducing debt. The announced uses included €2.8 billion for Philips, €833 million committed to Institut Mérieux, €71 million for Lifenet, €1.1 billion for Lingotto and €220 million for Exor Ventures.

The interesting part is not the shopping list. It is the timing. Capacity expanded after a specific realisation event, then much of that capacity gained a destination.

A founder looking only at Exor’s portfolio value could have guessed that it was always able to invest. The disclosed allocation tells the more useful story. Money has destinations. Even a successful asset sale does not become a blank cheque.

Exor’s sale of PartnerRe to Covéa illustrates how a realised cash event can change investment capacity. Photo: SurfAst / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Imagine you are raising £10 million. An investor tells you it owns a large portfolio of businesses. Fine. But what does that actually tell you about a cheque this quarter? Almost nothing.

Ask instead whether it invests through a defined programme, whether it has a usual first-cheque range and whether it is actively considering new commitments. You are not entitled to its balance sheet. You are entitled to avoid building your fundraising plan around assumptions.

GI Network's view: Family-office qualification is not about discovering who is rich. It is about discovering whose capital can still move after existing obligations, reserves and internal decision-making have had their say.

The billionaire deadlock

SunCable is not a story about investors being poor. It is a story about funding capacity being conditional.

After the administration began, SunCable’s administrators secured A$65 million of bridge funding, temporary finance intended to keep a business going until the next event. The business was stabilised and put through a sale process. Grok acquired SunCable’s assets on September 7, 2023 and narrowed the immediate development plan.

Here is the twist: Grok’s later willingness and ability to fund a restructuring did not mean the original shareholder group had a workable agreement to fund the project together when pressure first arrived.

That distinction is where most people stop looking. A founder sees a large prior round and assumes follow-on support. An investor sees another set of questions: who controls the next decision? What happens if milestones slip? Is this money competing with other commitments? Does providing more capital change control?

SunCable shows that wealthy shareholders and a prior raise do not guarantee agreement on replacement funding. Photo: Costa Karabelas / Pexels, Pexels licence (free commercial use).

The need for that work is sharper in a weak exit market. UBS reported that family offices held an average of 9% in cash in 2025. At the same time, PitchBook put private-equity distributions at about 17% of portfolio value in 2025, below the ten-year average of 26%.

Distributions are cash returned when investments are sold or otherwise realised. If fewer investments produce cash, there is less money to recycle into new ones. A portfolio can look valuable on paper while its owner becomes remarkably careful with new commitments.

The central mistake is simple: confusing wealth with deployment capacity.

The vehicle matters more than the surname

Tana Africa Capital shows how that gap can be closed.

Tana says it was created in 2011 as a $300 million evergreen vehicle, meaning it has no fixed end date, backed equally by the Oppenheimer family and Temasek, the Singapore-based investment company. It was built for African consumer and agricultural businesses, with a dedicated 12-person team.

Tana’s published account traces the Oppenheimer capital ultimately to proceeds following the family’s $5.1 billion De Beers disposal in 2012. It says Tana raised another $300 million from its existing shareholders in 2017. By September 2019, when it invested MAD200 million in Moroccan berry producer PALMAGRI, Tana said it had invested more than $250 million across Africa.

Those details matter because they turn an imposing family name into something a founder can assess: a specific pool, a stated geography, chosen sectors, an established team and a record of investments. The relevant prospect was not “the Oppenheimer family”. It was Tana.

What surprised us was how often this is treated as a minor research distinction. It is not. The family may be wealthy, but the vehicle determines whether your business belongs in the conversation at all.

Put Tana beside SunCable and Exor and a pattern appears that none of the cases states outright. Family resources become investable only after they pass through a mechanism: a defined vehicle, an agreed mandate, a particular decision process or an actual cash event.

That mechanism can make capital dependable. Or it can reveal that it is unavailable.

JIMCO, the Jameel family’s investment company, shows a related point. It identifies mobility, energy, food technology and financial inclusion as long-horizon themes, and says it takes time to assess direct investments. Its relationship with Rivian, the US electric-vehicle company, fitted the family’s operating history in mobility rather than a generic venture allocation. Rivian’s November 2021 IPO sold 175.95 million shares at $78 and generated $13.5 billion of net proceeds.

The lesson is not that every mobility company should contact JIMCO. It is that genuine operating overlap can matter more than a broad claim that an office invests “patiently”. If there is no specific reason why that family has an edge in your business, the conversation begins on weak ground.

The money that vanishes fastest

Archegos Capital Management, Bill Hwang’s New York family office, is the extreme warning about another kind of apparent capacity.

According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Archegos grew from about $1.5 billion of value and $10 billion of exposure in March 2020 to more than $36 billion of value and $160 billion of exposure at its March 2021 peak. It used total-return swaps, contracts that gave it economic exposure to shares without directly owning them.

Those positions required limited cash upfront. But they created collateral obligations if prices fell.

When ViacomCBS and Tencent Music shares declined, Archegos faced more than $13 billion of margin calls, demands from counterparties for more cash or assets. Credit Suisse alone demanded more than $2.8 billion on March 25, 2021, after Archegos said its cash was exhausted. Credit Suisse lost about $5.5 billion.

Archegos shows why borrowing capacity can disappear when falling asset values trigger collateral demands. Photo: Pixabay / Pexels, Pexels licence (free commercial use).

No ordinary founder is likely to obtain this level of detail about a prospective investor’s holdings. Nor should they attempt an interrogation. But the lesson travels. A credit line is borrowed buying power, not cash sitting in reserve. If an office depends heavily on collateral or concentrated positions, its ability to make a new investment can change suddenly for reasons that have nothing to do with your company.

This is where conventional wisdom breaks. The investor with the biggest visible portfolio may be less dependable than the investor with a smaller dedicated programme and explicit reserves.

A published no is useful

Smedvig Ventures, the Norway- and UK-linked venture investor, publishes the kind of filter founders should want more investors to state. It looks for European B2B technology companies, writes €4 million to €8 million tickets, invests in rounds of up to €20 million and requires at least €750,000 of annual recurring revenue.

It invests in few companies each year and reserves capacity for multiple rounds.

That makes qualification almost mechanical. A €2 million pre-revenue consumer business is not a Smedvig prospect, however attractive its story may be. The founder saves time. So does Smedvig.

This is the unglamorous answer to a glamorous fundraising problem. A short, well-qualified list beats a long list of famous names.

For infrastructure-scale businesses, the next question is even more important: what happens when the project needs more money? Founders preparing such rounds should focus on selling certainty before a solar project raise, not merely on describing ambition.

A family office may be willing to invest. That does not mean it can carry a delayed project, accept revised milestones or agree with co-investors on control. SunCable had already made that painfully clear.

What founders should test before outreach

Before contacting a family office, create a brief file for every target.

First, identify the actual vehicle or programme. Then test whether its sector, geography, stage and cheque range fit your round. Find the person who screens, recommends and approves an investment. Finally, identify the credible source of deployable cash and the claims likely to compete for it, including reserves for existing companies.

Only 50% of family offices reported a documented investment process including an investment-policy statement, according to UBS. That does not mean the other half cannot invest well. It does mean a founder should not assume a clear approval route exists.

The investor also has work to do. A first cheque creates a future decision. If the company performs well, the investor may need to contribute again to avoid losing influence or ownership. If it performs poorly, it may face a choice between funding a bridge and accepting a difficult outcome.

Before committing, an office should ask what money is already promised but not yet paid, how much is reserved for existing companies, what happens if distributions arrive late or a concentrated holding requires cash, and who can approve a follow-on investment when time is short.

Founders raising growth capital should also understand how much company you give up and who gets paid first. A patient investor can still negotiate terms that complicate the next financing.

What GI Network would test first

GI Network would not begin this kind of mandate with a large database export. We would map the relevant investment vehicle, stated mandate, likely cheque mechanics, approval route and identifiable liquidity events for each target. We would then test the founder’s funding plan against the objections that matter: who funds the next milestone, what cash claims sit ahead of the new commitment, and which terms could make the next raise harder.

That work narrows outreach. It also makes the remaining conversations more honest.

The Four-Gate Test

Before you count a family office as a live prospect, put it through four gates.

Gate one: Fit. Is there a current match on sector, geography, stage and cheque size? Target the programme, not the family surname.

Gate two: Cash. Can you identify a plausible source of deployable capital, such as a dedicated vehicle, dividend stream or realised sale? Then ask what commitments, reserves or collateral needs sit ahead of you.

Gate three: Authority. Do you know who can move the investment from interest to approval, and how that person makes the decision?

Gate four: The next cheque. If milestones slip or another round is needed, is there an understood approach to follow-on funding, bridge finance and control?

Fail one gate and the name stays in research. Pass all four and you may have something far more valuable than a wealthy logo on a pitch deck: an investor who can still act when the story becomes difficult.